Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/772

Rh 73(5 H E B E S Y reading of books written by the Eunomians a capital offence. Theodosius and Valentinian proscribed Nestorian books, and Valentinian and Marcian the books of Eutyches and Nestorius. The custom became so common that the condemnation of any heresy by the church was followed by the proscription of the writings of members of the sect. The Codex Theodosianus, bk. xvi. tit. 5, &quot; De hoereticis,&quot; enumerates a great variety of laws against heresy with penalties more or less severe. They had the practical effect of declaring heretics outlaws, who could not hold offices of dignity or value, receive or bequeath money, enforce con tracts, &amp;lt;fec. In some cases death was the punishment for heresy. Justinian made it impossible for any heretic to bear witness in the civil courts of the land. This legislation may all be traced back to the action of Theodosius, who imposed the Nicene creed upon all his subjects, and made it a law of the land. It continued in force during the Middle Ages, and in consequence heretics who could not accept the Nicene creed were outlaws also. This perhaps explains the curious fact that almost all the mediaeval heretics were also revolutionists. During the Middle Ages, especially from the time of Innocent III. onwards, civil interference in cases of heresy was much increased. In the early church the power of discipline belonged to the presbytery, acid was afterwards usurped by the bishops, who continued to exercise it in matters of heresy until Innocent III. appointed the Inquisition to deal with heretics. So long as the empire was not Christian, the civil law had nothing to do with the punishment of erroneous opinions, but as soon as Christianity became the authorized religion of the state, the old pagan idea that the state has power to punish religiones novas et illicitas was revived. The state, either instructed by the church or, as in the Theodosian code, without instruction, visited with civil pains and penalties all such opinions. This came to a height when the Inquisition was established ; and civil courts and national assemblies one after another decreed that whatever penalties were imposed by the Inquisition should be imposed by the state, or else handed over all cases of heresy to the Inquisi tion to be dealt with as matters deserving the infliction of civil penalties, fines, imprisonment, torture, and death. There is no sadder page in the history of the church than her alliance with the state for the purpose of torturing men out of opinions different from her own. Since the Reforma tion the persecuting spirit, although tenacious of life, has been gradually dying out. Principal Heresies. Early Christian theologians wrote a great many books against heretics in which they enume rated the various heresies which had sprung up in the church up to their own time. St Augustine tells us (Ep. 222) that Philastrius, bishop of Brescia, had discovered 28 heresies among the Jews before the coming of Christ, and 128 in the Christian Church afterwards; and many other orthodox writers have given very long lists of these erro neous opinions. It was natural that the early centuries of the Christian era, especially the first five, should be some what prolific in heresies, because that was the very period when the church was occupied in defining the principal doctrines of Christianity. A history of heresies must spend most time upon the early centuries. The first dogmatic work of the church was to define the nature of Christ, who occupied the central place in its thought, and it had to steer its way between two opposite views, both of which interfered with the full dogmatic expression of the nature of the Mediator. On the one hand, many of the Jewish converts never rose to the height of the Christian idea of the person of Christ, and it is evident that these must have been very numerous from the emphasis with which it is insisted that Christians should OeoXoyf.lv rov mov. These Jewish converts preferred to regard the Saviour as the last of the prophets, one who bore the same relation to God and to man as the prophets did. They shrank from the idea of the incarnation ; they seemed to feel no need for the divine Saviour. This theory was of course accompanied by other views about the nature of Christianity, but the main element was opposition to the Christian doctrine of the real divinity of Christ, God who has become man. This Ebionite heresy has been maintained by men who wish to call themselves Christians since these early days, and has taken a great variety of shapes ; but whether it is held by Jew or Unitarian, there is the same outline of opinion and the same steadfast repugnance to the doctrine of the incarnation. On the other hand, the philosophic doctrine of the repugnance between matter and spirit, the idea, which runs through all Greek philosophy, that matter is the source of evil, induced many of the early Gentile converts to Christianity to think of the incarnation as a metaphor rather than as a fact. Christ, they thought, did not take,, but only seemed to take, a human body. These Docetists, as they were called, had a whole series of successors in the early church. When Christian theology advanced step by step in the definition of the doctrine of the person of Christ, it was this old idea of the repugnance between the divine spirit and human nature embodied that lay at the root of the Apollinarian, Eutychian, and Monophysite heresies. Apollinaris denied that the Theanthropos had a &quot; reason able &quot; soul ; he denied the full humanity of the Saviour. Eutyches denied that the Theanthropos had a human nature ; and the Monophysites, in their various theories, held strongly by the same idea. All these theories, how ever different in form and expression, denied the full and true humanity of Christ, and so contradicted the church s yearning for a Saviour truly man as well as truly God. These heresies, along with the Nestorian, were all finally condemned at the council of Chalcedon (the fourth oecu menical). But long before the church had definitely set forth the doctrine of the person of Christ, its attention was turned to the doctrine of the essential nature of the Godhead. At first this doctrine was scarcely considered apart from Christology. It is impossible to separate the history of the doctrine of the Trinity from the doctrine of the person of Christ ; for long the two separate problems were inex tricably mixed. At length it became evident to the mind of the church that there were two doctrines, and Christian theology turned aside to discuss, and if possible settle, the doctrine of the essential nature of the Godhead before it proceeded to exhaust the doctrine of the person of Christ. For the real problem in the Arian controversy was not the divinity of the Mediator but the nature of God. Is God to be thought of as a Trinity or as a Unity ? what is the relation of the Second Person in the Trinity to the First Person 1 The real gain to Christian theology which came from the discussions in the Arian controversy was to thrust out the Greek conception of Deity as the Absolute who cannot be described save by negations, and to put in its stead a Christian conception which shows that there are motions within the Deity which, however incomprehensible, enable us to know that God may be in sympathy with men, and that all things may live, move, and have their being in Him. The philosophical idea that matter is the source of evil, that matter has always some stubborn element in it by which it can defy the ideal, gave rise to a whole series of ancient and mediaeval heresies. The Gnostics in all their various sects distinguished between God and the Creator. The good God, they held, could not defile Himself by con tact with matter, and therefore could not be the God of creation and providence. Christian theology, on the other hand, has always confessed God to be the Almighty Maker